| dc.description.abstract | This thesis assesses what can be learnt from the Arabic-Islamic sources, including Jāhilī (pre-Islamic) poetry, the Syriac and Iranian material, epigraphy and recent archaeological findings about the different peoples that inhabited the northern part of eastern Arabia – al-Baḥrayn and Kāẓima – and how these groups were integrated into the late antique Oikouménē. The groups that inhabited the area are: the Eastern Syriac Qaṭarīs, who adhered to the ‘Nestorian’ Church of the East, Babylonian Jews, Persians and Zoroastrians, and two further communities whose origins lay in south and south-eastern Asia. Furthermore, three Arabian tribal groupings resided in this region: the ʿAbd al-Qays and large sections of the Tamīm and the Bakr b. Wāʾil. In this thesis, we study the diversity of the inhabitants, their respective links to regional powers, movements, and ideas current in the late antique Near East, and highlight how the coming of Islam effected each group. Moreover, we are interested in the transition of al-Baḥrayn and Kāẓima from the Sāsānian unto the early Islamic periods. Further to the integration of late antique eastern Arabia in Near Eastern academic studies, a major aim across our chapters is to shed further light on the limitations and potentialities of the Arabic-Islamic sources and how they relate to other source materials. Arabic textual sources are compared with available material from Syriac and Middle Persian writings. Moreover, all available textual sources are compared with recent archaeological findings from this region – where we encourage further surveys and excavations that would take considerations from our work. This thesis emphasizes that Arabia was not a monolithic landscape and that in order to understand the emergence of Islam from this region, we are to comprehend the diverse peoples and cultures who lived in the Peninsula and their various links to the late antique Oikouménē and the cultural trends associated with it. | en_GB |
